We are in a recession, it is official and to cope, everybody is tightening his or her collective belts. Cutting expenses we have control over. One popular theme is Cutting One’s Grocery Bill, a nice thought, but we have been inundated with various services that charge a service fee to teach site users How to Save. But if the goal is to save money, why pay money? Especially when there is a better alternative for FREE!

Pinching Your Pennies offers the same AND more of what a fee service does. Let’s do a side-by-side comparison, shall we:

Pay site A wants you to play its game. But be careful as there are many restrictions on how, when and where to shop for your grocery deals.

PROS:
1. Colored coded system tells you when an item is over 75% off retail price, and you should stock up.
2. FREE Forums for members to share & exchange ideas, but deal details are Mushy-hush hush
Site A says the game secret is to tell you when an item is at its lowest price and when to use a coupon with it. This should only be once for the life of the coupon or every 12 weeks.
3. Site A claims to include unadvertised sale deals to save you money.
4. Introductory offer is $1 for four weeks.

CONS:
1. Expensive subscription service! After your $1 introductory period, your reserved credit card number that you left when you registered will be charged the normal rate. This runs about $1.25 PER store. So if you want the deal info for more stores, you pay for it. Easily one could be spending over $30 month for information that is FREE on Pinching Your Pennies.com and we don’t want your credit card number, neither. Oh, then there is the issue of canceling one’s subscription- difficult to get a full refund.
2. Limited number of days your shopping list is available. Typically, one can only upload your shopping list the last 3 days of any weekly sale. The reason being that all coupons and deals can be included, including the most recent Sunday’s coupons. Well, what about the other 4 days of shopping? What if there are 72-hour sales? You miss those! However, Pinching Your Pennies.com has respective shopping lists ready the 1st day of the grocery sale and will update the list with the most recent coupon inserts, usually Sunday night.
3. The claim that a coupon is used once, and then retired is FALSE. There is a annotated *** on each grocery shopping list claiming that a coupon has been used, but the game, er Site A is using it again as each week there are new subscribers. So a single coupon could be repeated for weeks. Now you know better!
4. Site A also claims to include unadvertised sale items, not always true. During my 4-week trial period, I only found one unadvertised sale item. Pinching Your Pennies includes ALL deals, as there are over 50,000 members who find deals, too. They post and share! You do know ALL the sales.
5. Limited grocery store selections in some states. Site A doesn’t have a game plan for every grocery or drug store. So if you shop at Store B, but there is no list, sorry.
Pinching Your Pennies included most if not all stores in your area, check it out.

So what does Pinching Your Pennies have to offer, exactly?

So what all does Pinching Your Pennies offer for FREE:

1. Weekly Grocery Shopping Lists to your local markets
2. Weekly Shopping Lists to National Chain Stores
3. Weekly Shopping Lists to the best Food Storage deals (UT only, currently)
4. Unadvertised Specials
5. Individual Threads in the Community Forums for members to share deals and offer help, encouragement and support to one another
6. A Grocery Coupon List that tells you which Sunday a coupon is issued
7. Recipes and more Recipes
8. A Freebie Forum
9. A Price book to know when an item is low enough to stockpile
10. Food Storage Help, from step by step info to how to get 72 hr kits made
11. Best Items to buy each week lists in Food Storage, National Chain Stores and Utah (for now)
12. Ethical Coupon Usage and Proper Redemption Taught
13. How to lower my household spending while increasing my food storage
14. Coupon Trading Forums & Trains
15. The best online deals and secret finds on the net

Pinching Your Pennies is a FREE money saving website. There are many pay services out there, too, but offer an inferior product. The pay sites do not have passionate administrators and volunteers who donate hundreds of hours each month to help out you and me save money. Pinching Your Pennies will continue to be FREE as we are all trying to save money, together.